The genetic investigation of diseases and eHealth are a priority of the Smart Specialization Strategy of Cyprus. The strategy can best be served by creating a Centre of Excellence (CoE) with two pillars: a) A contemporary Biobank research infrastructure that incorporates eHealth; b) a state-of-the-art research facility to support the Cyprus Human Genome Project and drive translational research, focused on genetic diseases, thus enhancing the European Research Area. Biobanks are organized collections of medical records and biospecimens, aimed to support biomedical research, serving as repositories and distribution centers. Biobanking and genomics infrastructures in Cyprus are lagging behind of European levels, thus limiting the prospects for research and innovation potential. The CY-Biobank shall upgrade the existing infrastructure, implementing high standard procedures and quality management systems for safeguarding data and material of the highest trustworthiness, for downstream investigations. The CoE will embrace the entire research community of Cyprus and serve as an incubator for innovative ideas and as a tertiary medical and educational institute for the rare monogenic and frequent complex disorders, aimed at better patient care and precision medicine. The CY-Biobank will adopt a patient-centric approach showing respect to sensitive ethical, legal and social issues, with the involvement of all stakeholders in the medical and patients’ communities. The CoE aspires also to play a broader role by forming the MediEuro Network with countries in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, thus complementing efforts for bridging EU to this part of the world. The Advanced Partners are the Medical University of Graz that coordinated the preparatory phase of the project for Biobanking & BioMolecular resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI) and its subsequent European Research Infrastructure Consortium, BBMRI-ERIC, which represents the largest family of Biobanks in Europe.

The clinical and genetic investigations of diseases of the Cypriot population as well as eHealth are a priority of the Smart Specialization Strategy of the Cyprus government. This strategy can best be served by creating a Centre of Excellence (CoE) with two main spear heads: A contemporary Biobank and a research facility for developing the Cyprus Human Genome Project. Biobanks are organized collections of medical records and biological material of all types, aimed to support biomedical research, serving as repositories and distribution centers. Cyprus, as a Low Performing Member State, was the last country that started a Biobank, when 4 years ago we were competitively funded by the European Regional Development Fund & the Republic of Cyprus through the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation. That project provided €2m, 0.4m of which was for creating a seed infrastructure for Biobanking. The rest was used for research in inherited kidney diseases. The money for Biobanking was too little for supporting a contemporary operation of recruiting adequate numbers of patients with complete records and promoting translational research. Here, we propose to upgrade the existing small infrastructure and turning it into a CoE with the assistance of Advanced Partners who led a similar operation Europe-wide, Prof. K. Zatloukal, coordinator of the Biobanking & BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure that recently became an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) directed by Jan-Eric Litton (BBMRI-ERIC) located in Graz, Austria. The previous activity allowed us to comprehend the problems associated with patient recruitment and record collection. This can now serve as a starting point for upgrading it into a larger scale operation of European standard, aimed at leading the Cyprus Human Genome Project, part of which will be the sequencing of 1000 Cypriot genomes. This CoE will provide the prospects for innovative research and lead Cyprus into the European Research Area.

As we can observe in employment strategies and youth employment contained in the Framework Europe2020. This strategy recognizes the importance of entrepreneurship and self-employment to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and there are several initiatives to address these issues: Agenda for new skills and jobs, Youth on the Move: education and employment initiatives and the European Platform against Poverty and Social Exclusion. With all these strategies, the European Commission intends to focus its efforts on the creation of enterprises by unemployed people, sustainability and quality of work of self-employed businesses and supporting social entrepreneurs.In a broad sense, entrepreneurship should be considered as a mindset that supports everyone in day-to-day life at home and in society, and provides a foundation for entrepreneurs establishing a social or commercial activity. Entrepreneurship is a key competence for lifelong learning, as defined in the 2006 European Framework for Key Competences.Education for entrepreneurship is already high on the agenda in most EU Member States. A wide variety of programs and activities exist across Europe. However, there is a need of promoting these initiatives more systematically. The European Commission is committed to promoting education for entrepreneurship at all levels, from primary school to university and beyond.From the states members of the European Union has sued a cooperative approach to the tourism industry. This perception has served to move towards an open EU approach to sector. The entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty has laid the foundation of a true European tourism policy. Thus, in accordance with Article 195 of the Founding Treaty of the European Union, the same may hereafter:1 Promote the competitiveness of companies in this sector and create an environment favorable to their development;2. Promote cooperation between Member States, including through the exchange of best practices;3 . And develop an integrated approach to tourism by ensuring consideration of this sector in its other policies.This framework provides an opportunity for initiatives designed to benefit all the countries of the Union. The first one was forged in the high-level conference on European tourism, held in Madrid on April 14, 2010. Then the Ministers of Tourism of the EU supported the ' Madrid Declaration', which makes a number of recommendations concerning the implementation of a consolidated European tourism policy emphasizes the need to strengthen the sustainable competitiveness of the sector and recognizes the value added of EU action to promote tourism, which positively complements the action of the Member States through an integrated approach to tourism .Subsequently.But if we take a look to the data of the failure entrepreneurs businesses the reality is, that more than half of the companies that are created do not exceed the first five years of operation. Specifically, 80% of small businesses fail within the first five years and 90% fail within 10 years. The data also handles alarming figure: 50% of new freelancers who are discharged daily, close within three years.In this context we have realized that it is essential to provide entrepreneurs not only with the tools and methods to open their own companies but to provide with tools and methods for keeping their business open after the third year.With this background, the ENTRETOUR project was aimed to get the following objectives:Develop a e-learning course in order to help entrepreneurs having a long lasting enterprise avoiding the failure after the third year. Ultimately, offer entrepreneurs a product that will help them to continue their business ideaSPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:• Analyze the situation of entrepreneurship rates and sustainability of the same in the EU • Analyze the types of entrepreneurship • Investigate stages of entrepreneurship. • Encourage the creation of new businesses by supporting them with tools for business consolidation. • Identify key skills for business consolidation • Encourage the motivation to continue the business started. • Strengthen and promote the recovery of an entrepreneurial culture • Strengthen quality and durable enterprises. • Support the socioeconomic competitive culture. • Generate new business entrepreneurs networks at European levelIn short, provide to the entrepreneurs with the tools and methods to face the challenges of self-employment despite the current economic situation, the current consumer environment and favor not everyone spends less than before.

In the field of colloidal science, much progress has been done on the synthesis of complex building blocks mimicking molecular structures with the hope of elaborating innovative materials. However, in the present state of the art, the rates at which these building blocks are obtained are exceedingly small. As a consequence, even though theoretically, revolutionary materials can be imagined, throughputs are far too low to approach industrial applications. We propose to unlock this bottleneck with microfluidic technology. The starting point is the discovery (by ESPCI) of a new hydrodynamic mechanism that reorganizes droplets clusters into well-defined configurations during their transport in microchannels. In this work, the monodisperse production, at high rates, of a variety of anisotropic clusters (triangles, tetrahedrons etc.), has been demonstrated. Our objective is to deepen and harness this mechanism by transforming, under high throughput conditions, such clusters into solid and stable building blocks that self-assemble into functional materials. Rates of production of one million of building blocks per second are feasible. This would open new avenues in the field of material sciences and pave the way towards an industrial production of revolutionary colloidal materials. The project clearly focuses on this goal, by bringing together outstanding teams with complementary expertise: Microfluidics & Chemistry (ESPCI), Hydrodynamic theory & Condensed Matter Physics (Technion), Numerical Simulations (KTH). The WPs include the chemical synthesis of surfactants, high throughput production of building blocks, their crystallization into functional materials, emphasizing on photonic band gap materials, characterized numerically by Technion. Fundamentally important, work will be tightly linked to theoretical analysis and numerical simulations and will benefit from market studies made by a SME.